Catharine MacKinnon

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Dr. Catharine Alice MacKinnon (born 7 October 1946) is an American feminist, scholar, lawyer, teacher, and activist. She was educated at Smith College (B.A., 1969), Yale Law School (J.D., 1977) and Yale University Graduate School (Ph.D. in political science, 1987). As of 2004, she is the Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School and is also a long-term Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Chicago.

MacKinnon is one of the most widely-cited legal scholars in the English language. [1]

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Career

MacKinnon holds a B.A. from Smith College, a J.D. from Yale University, and a PhD in political science from Yale University. She obtained her J.D. and her PhD simultaneously, without using a duel academic program.

A proponent of "feminism unmodified," a form of feminism distinguished from, for example, Marxist or liberal approaches, MacKinnon wrote Towards a Feminist Theory of the State, an analysis of the subordination of women to men in terms of sexuality focusing on the relationship between knowledge and power, focusing on the state, as exemplified by law, as a form of male power.

MacKinnon published in 1979 her path-breaking study, "Sexual Harassment of Working Women", arguing that sexual harassment is a form of sexual discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and any other sex discrimination prohibition. Her argument, first accepted by a court a decade before, was adopted by the United States Supreme Court in Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson, a case on which she was co-counsel for the respondent, Mechelle Vinson, and for which she wrote the respondent's brief.

In 2005, she was elected Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS).

She is currently the Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan.

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Antipornography civil rights ordinance

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In 1980, Linda Boreman (who had appeared in the pornographic film Deep Throat as "Linda Lovelace") made public statements that her ex-husband Chuck Traynor had beaten and raped her, and violently coerced her into making Deep Throat and other pornographic films. Boreman made her charges public for the press corps at a press conference, together with MacKinnon, members of Women Against Pornography, and feminist writer Andrea Dworkin offering statements in support. After the press conference, Dworkin, MacKinnon, Gloria Steinem, and Boreman began discussing the possibility of using federal civil rights law to seek damages from Traynor and the makers of Deep Throat. Linda Boreman was interested, but backed off after Steinem discovered that the statute of limitations for a possible suit had passed (Brownmiller 337).

MacKinnon and Dworkin, however, continued to discuss civil rights litigation as a possible approach to combatting pornography. In the fall of 1983, MacKinnon secured a one-semester appointment for Dworkin at the University of Minnesota, where they co-taught an interdepartmental course on pornography. During the course, they hashed out details of a civil rights approach. MacKinnon opposed traditional arguments against pornography based on the idea of morality or sexual innocence, as well as the use of traditional criminal obscenity law to suppress pornography. Instead, Dworkin and MacKinnon defined pornography as: "the graphic sexually explicit subordination of women through pictures or words" that also includes a specific list of concrete presentations ranging from objectification to extreme violence. Instead of condemning pornography for violating "community standards" of sexual decency or modesty, they characterized pornography as a form of sex discrimination, and sought to give women the right to seek damages under civil rights law.

With encouragement from community activists in south Minneapolis, the Minneapolis city government hired MacKinnon and Dworkin to draft an antipornography civil rights ordinance as an amendment to the Minneapolis city civil rights ordinance. The amendment defined pornography as a civil rights violation against women, and allowed women who claimed harm from pornography to sue the producers and distributors for damages in civil court. The law was passed twice by the Minneapolis city council but vetoed by the mayor. Another version of the ordinance passed in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1984, but overturned as unconstitutional by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. MacKinnon continued to support the civil rights approach in her writing and activism, and supported anti-pornography feminists who organized later campaigns in Cambridge, Massachusetts (1985) and Bellingham, Washington (1988) to pass versions of the ordinance by voter initiative.

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Butler decision in Canada

In February 1992, the Supreme Court of Canada largely accepted MacKinnon’s theories of equality, hate propaganda, and pornography, citing extensively from a brief she co-authored in a ruling against Manitoba pornography distributor Donald Butler.

The Butler decision was controversial; it is sometimes implied that shipments of Dworkin's book Pornography were seized by Canadian customs agents under this ruling, as well as books by Marguerite Duras and David Leavitt [2]; the books were indeed seized by customs, but not as a consequence of Butler [3]. To date, at least one successful Butler prosecution has been undertaken, against the lesbian sadomasochistic magazine Bad Attitude.

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Other legal work

MacKinnon represented Linda Susan Boreman (better known under her stage name of Linda Lovelace) from 1980 until her death in 2002.

MacKinnon has represented Bosnian and Croatian women against Serbs accused of genocide since 1992. She was co-counsel, representing named plaintiff S. Kadic, in the lawsuit Kadic v. Karadzic and won a jury verdict of $745 million in New York City in 2000. Kadic was the first case to recognize rape as an act of genocide; the lawsuit (under the United States' Alien Tort Statute) also established forced prostitution and forced impregnation as legally actionable acts of genocide. In MacKinnon’s view, traditional approaches to human rights gloss over abuses specific to women (e.g., sexual violence), both in wartime and peacetime.

In 2001, MacKinnon was named co-director of the Lawyers Alliance for Women (LAW) Project, an initiative of Equality Now, an international non-governmental organization.


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Publications

  • Sexual Harassment of Working Women : A Case of Sex Discrimination (1979) ISBN 0300022999
  • Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law (1987) ISBN 0674298748
  • Pornography and Civil Rights: A New Day for Women's Equality (1988) ISBN 096218490X
  • Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (1989) ISBN 0674896467
  • Only Words (1993) ISBN 0674639332
  • In Harm’s Way: The Pornography Civil Rights Hearings (with Andrea Dworkin, 1997) ISBN 0674445791
  • Sex Equality (2001) ISBN 1566624797
  • "Sexual Harassment of Working Women: A Case of Sex Discrimination." In Sexual Harassment as an Ethical Issue in Academic Life, edited by L. P. Francis, 129-45. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2001.
  • Sex Equality: Rape Law. University Casebook Series. New York: Foundation Press, 2001. (Reprinted from MacKinnon, Catharine A. Sex Equality, 1-50, 551, 766-908. New York: Foundation Press, 2001.)
  • "Sex Equality: On Difference and Dominance." In Theorizing Feminism: Parallel Trends in the Humanities and Social Sciences. 2nd ed., edited by A. C. Herrmann and A. J. Stewart, 232-53. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2001.
  • Sex Equality: Family Law. University Casebook Series. New York: Foundation Press, 2001. (Reprinted from MacKinnon, Catharine A. Sex Equality, 1-50, 551-765. New York: Foundation Press, 2001.)
  • Sex Equality. University Casebook Series. New York: Foundation Press, 2001.
  • "Revised Opinions in Brown v. Board of Education, MacKinnon, J., concurring in the judgment." In What Brown v. Board of Education Should Have Said: The Nation's Top Legal Experts Rewrite America's Landmark Civil Rights Decision, edited by J. M. Balkin, 143-57. New York: New York Univ. Press, 2001.
  • "Only Words." In . 2nd ed., edited by D. Dyzenhaus and A. Ripstein, 876-87. Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 2001. (Excerpted from her book Only Words. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1993.)
  • "The Liberal State." In Law and Morality: Readings in Legal Philosophy. 2nd ed., edited by D. Dyzenhaus and A. Ripstein, 218-31. Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 2001. (Excerpted from her book Only Words. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1993.)
  • "Féminisme, marxisme et postmodernisme." Actuel Marx 30 (2001): 101-30.
  • " 'The Case' Responds." Am. Pol. Sci. Rev. 95, no. 3 (2001): 709-11.
  • "Can Fatherhood be Optional," The New York Times, sec. 4, p.15, col. 3 (17 June 2001) (op-ed piece).
  • "Books." Law Quad. Notes 44, no. 3 (2001): 6-8. (Introduction to excerpt from her book Sex Equality in "Books" section.)
  • "State of Emergency: Who Will Declare War on Terrorism Against Women?" Women's Rev. Books 19, no. 6 (2002): 7-8.
  • "The Logic of Experience: Reflections on the Development of Sexual Harassment Law (Symposium: The Bicentennial Celebration of the Courts of the District of Columbia Circuit)." Geo. L.J. 90, no. 3 (2002): 813-33.
  • "Keeping It Real: On Anti-Essentialism." In Crossroads, Directions, and a New Critical Race Theory, edited by F. Valdes et al., 71-83. Philadephia: Temple Univ. Press, 2002.
  • "Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State: Toward Feminist Jurisprudence." In Women, Law and Social Change: Core Readings and Current Issues. 4th ed., edited by T. B. Dawson, 380-3. Canadian Legal Studies Series. Concord, Ontario: Captus Press, 2002.
  • "Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State: An Agenda for Theory." In Women, Law and Social Change: Core Readings and Current Issues. 4th ed., edited by T. B. Dawson, 377-80. Canadian Legal Studies Series. Concord, Ontario: Captus Press, 2002.
  • "Feminism and Legal Education." Sekai 706 (2002): 258-71. (Article is in Japanese.)
  • Sex Equality: Sexual Harassment (2003) ISBN 1587785641
  • Sex Equality: Lesbian and Gay Rights (2003) ISBN 1587785633
  • Directions in Sexual Harassment Law (2003) ISBN 0300098006
  • "Women and Law: The Power to Change." In Sisterhood Is Forever: The Women's Anthology for a New Millennium, edited by R. Morgan, 447-55. New York: Washington Square Press, 2003.
  • "The Social Origin of Sexual Harassment." In Violence and Society: A Reader, edited by M. Silberman, 251-8. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2003.
  • "Of Hearts and Minds, Lost and Found: A Tribute to Andrea Dworkin." Rain and Thunder, no. 18 (2003): 18-20.
  • "Mainstreaming Feminism in Legal Education." J. Legal Educ. 53, no. 2 (2003): 199-212.
  • "The Legal Regulation of Sexual Harassment: From Tort to Sex Discrimination." In Violence and Society: A Reader, edited by M. Silberman, 259-70. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2003.
  • "The Straight Road: A Tribute to Burke Marshall." Yale L.J. 113, no. 4 (2004): 811-4.
  • "The Road Not Taken: Sex Equality in Lawrence v. Texas." Ohio St. L.J. 65, no. 5 (2004): 1081-95.
  • "Prosecutor v. Nahimana, Barayagwiza, & Ngeze." Am. J. Int'l L. 98, no. 2 (2004): 325-30.
  • "Of Mice and Men: A Feminist Fragment on Animal Rights." In Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions, edited by C. R. Sunstein and M. C. Nussbaum, 263-76. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2004.
  • "International Decisions: Prosecutor v. Nahimana, Barayagwiza, & Ngeze. Case No. ICTR 99-52-T. Judgment and Sentence." Am. J. Int'l L. 98, no. 2 (2004): 325-30. (Commentary on this case decided by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, December 3, 2003.)
  • Directions in Sexual Harassment Law. R. B. Siegel, co-editor. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 2004.
  • "Afterword." In Directions in Sexual Harassment Law, , edited by C. A. MacKinnon and R. B. Siegel, 672-704. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 2004.
  • Women's Lives, Men's Laws (2005) ISBN 0674015401
  • "X Underrated." Times Higher Education Supplement, no. 1692 (2005): 18-9.
  • "Women, Violence Against." In Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity, vol. 3 (T-Z, Index): 1164-5. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005.
  • "Pornography as Trafficking." Mich. J. Int'l L. 26, no. 4 (2005): 993-1012.
  • "The Logic of Experience: Reflections on the Development of Sexual Harassment Law." In Women and the Law, edited by Jane Cambell Moriarty, 53-75. Eagan, Minn.: Thomson/West, 2005. (Originally published under the same title in Geo. L.J. 90, no. 3 (2002): 813-33.)
  • "Genocide's Sexuality." In Political Exclusion and Domination, edited by M. S. Williams and S. Macedo, 313-56. NOMOS, vol. 46. New York: New York Univ. Press, 2005.
  • "Sex Equality under the Constitution of India: Problems, Prospects, and 'Personal Laws'." ICON: Int'l J. Const. L. 4, no. 2 (2006): 181-202.
  • Are Women Human?: And Other International Dialogues. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 2006.
  • "Gender Literacy in Law." In On the Bias: Ideas for Judicial Education and Action, edited by K. Mahoney and J. K. Wilson. New York: New York Univ. Press. Forthcoming.
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Court cases

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See also

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External links

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